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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574475">A mother for an orphan</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerezdeMiranda/pseuds/PerezdeMiranda'>PerezdeMiranda</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Enusor of Kóverax [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Bisexual Male Character, Cannibalism, Cyberpunk, Cyborgs, Dark Fantasy, Dystopia, Elf Culture &amp; Customs, Elf/Human Relationship(s), Fantastic Racism, Fantasy, Gen, Hacking, Magic, Orgy, Original Character(s), Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Science Fiction, Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy, Social Anxiety, Suicide Attempt, Swords &amp; Sorcery, Trans Character, Wizards</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:35:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,325</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574475</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerezdeMiranda/pseuds/PerezdeMiranda</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Enusor of Kóverax [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28572747">Una madre para un huérfano</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerezdeMiranda/pseuds/PerezdeMiranda">PerezdeMiranda</a>.
        </li>

    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Despite the string of proton grenades that hung from her belt, despite the bloody sword she held, despite her many murders, and - of course! - despite the thirty million reward that the zaibatsu Rasko offered for her head, the countenance of that most beautiful elf was the living image of compassion.<br/>
Leaning back in her rocking chair, she tenderly stroked the hair of a sleeping elf child, completely indifferent to the gunshots, explosions and screams of pain that were flooding the castle of Kóverax at that moment.<br/>
Oh, Kóverax! The illusory filters were going to drop eventually. It was you, black and imposing from the depths of the forest, one of the very few torches that remained in that world of darkness. Your towering battlements excited the imagination of the few idle men capable of gazing into the recesses of the forest, a species almost extinct in those days! Oh, Kóverax, stronghold of Cromlyr!<br/>
The doors of the meeting room were opened by a dashing knight, whose sweat did not in the least detract from his dignified gaze.<br/>
"The walls are lost. Kóverax is lost. All is lost,” he said, addressing the elf. "Oh, Inquisitor Baeralas! Is this the end of the Cause, the end of the Inquisition?"<br/>
Euvos' anxiety eased upon hearing the Inquisitor's responses, despite being aware that the Heretics would enter the meeting room at any moment and kill them all.<br/>
He then noticed the elf boy, Enusor, who was sleeping reclining on the rocking chair, probably under the influence of some drug supplied by Baeralas.<br/>
"Oh, Cromlyr!" Said Euvos. "Enusor! The boy…! Will he also die at the hands of the Heretics? Can't they let it live? To what extent is his compassion non-existent?"<br/>
"Compassion? Do you speak of compassion, Euvos, do you speak of compassion?" Baeralas replied, completely caustic. "What would compassion really be? Which of the acts of the Heretics would be more compassionate? Have you stopped to think about it, Euvos? Do you know what compassion is?"<br/>
Euvos understood and could not help but nod in resignation.<br/>
"What?" Said the knight, turning pale. "You can't be serious. You love that boy, as does everyone in the Entourage!"<br/>
"Since I love him, may I perhaps proceed in another way?"<br/>
Without losing her usual serenity, the elf's face was filled with regret.<br/>
"I am going, my friend, to be compassionate to the child."<br/>
But it was too late. There was no time for compassion. Knights from RaskoCOPS stormed into the room and riddled the unfortunate Euvos with blaster shots.<br/>
But Baeralas was faster.<br/>
The detonations wiped out almost all the Heretics.<br/>
Only three knights remained standing: Captain Sir Nacle and his two lieutenants, Sergeants Ceho and Jaai. The first drew his sword and walked towards Baeralas, while gesturing to his companions to stay out of the way.<br/>
"What now, Despiop?" Said SirNacle defiantly. "Now what? So much for what? I told you your bullshit wasn't going to get you anywhere. Apart from dying, it has been of no use to you!"<br/>
The Inquisitor interrupted her speech with a first thrust.<br/>
Baeralas's blows were quick. Nacle was losing ground. The sergeants were pointing her assault rifles at the head of the Inquisitor, and would have fired if not for the captain's insistence on being victorious in a one-on-one duel.<br/>
"As much as you insist, Despiop, you will never stop being who you are."<br/>
"Gender is something that can flow and change. The genitals, with the necessary spells, too. But your prowess with the sword… I don't know."<br/>
As expected, words like this made the sergeants stop seeing sense in following the whims of their superior. Baeralas died laughing, her head pierced by multiple plasma blasts.<br/>
The knights of the RaskoCOPS then noticed the presence of the boy who was still there. He was not dead, but asleep, and he had just woken up. He had just taken a blaster from Euvos's lifeless body, and was pointing it, to the surprise of the knights, at his own temple.<br/>
Despite his very young age.<br/>
A tranquilizer dart thrown by Jaai interrupted any suicide attempt. And the room was calm. The three friends - friends? - looked at each other in terror.<br/>
"Fuck ..." Ceho muttered. "I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep all fucking week."<br/>
"He was a boy… a fucking boy!" Jaai added. "You told us, Nacle, that there would be madness in all this. But a kid pointing himself with a fucking blaster? What kind of madness did we just see? What was this kid doing living among this bunch of nuts?"<br/>
Sir Nacle advanced towards the unconscious body of Enusor without being able to hide the humiliation caused by Baeralas's jokes. That is why he spat on her disfigured corpse.<br/>
"The bandits of Kóverax… We have seen a lot of madness in the Doant woods, but today will be difficult to overcome. Understandably, there is not much sanity left in bandits. We all know the problems of life in the Unprotected Lands. But these people… You can't say they lived like one. They were mired day after day in disgusting orgies, mixing men and women… Fucking, getting high and killing, little more. We are not going to fool ourselves, we are not very different. But, a child…! It could be from any of the bitches we've slaughtered. Even from Despiop himself! God know how much magic he had in vein ... Totally unnatural! This is not the environment for a child to have to grow up. We have to take him to the nearest RaskoCenter..."<br/>
"RaskoCenter? Bah!" Jaai replied. "Let's leave it in the barracks next to the rewards panel and let them carry it! Today is going to create too much trauma for all of us. If we want all this shit to have been worth it, we will have to collect the reward as soon as possible. Thirty million can go a long way! Tonight it will be time to get high on everything, but to get all this shit out of our heads I think it will take more drugs and whores than usual!"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Garuga the Ravager: The Tech-Priest (Part 1)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I remember that three-hour bus trip — in the hottest heat and aberrant music — I remember as one of the most insufferable journeys of my fucking life. I felt ridiculous traveling through these ridiculous places. To get to what?<br/>It was supposed to be at the Ananjo bus stop. A bus stop made up solely of a sign that served as the town's clock, in a tiny square that, supposedly, was the main social nucleus of that village that had just arrived, despite which it was already beginning - and with good reason - to hate. The old men who spent their time dead on the benches, placed to the bar so as not to think about the absurdity of their stocks, turned their filthy heads, alarmed, and looked at me.<br/>A good uncomfortable glancing session awaited me, and I had very little patience for it. Then would come the babbling of the old men, stinky and toothless, with their "where are you from" and fucking shits like that. I then remembered with particular disgust my boss's advice on "being kind, smiling, and considerate." No prep exam had prepared me for that apocalypse. If they had really known about Ananjo's circumstances, they would not have sent me there under any circumstances.<br/>I was fully aware that a tracking spell was weighing on me, and they were aware of my every move. I wished with great force that they, having seen the garbage that I had just arrived at, were aware of the absurdity of the whole matter and would send me a message indicating that I could return, in order to assign a task not only better but less vomiting.<br/>But, for now, I had no choice but to stick and obey. The question was how the hell to obey. It seemed that whatever he did, he was going to be worth nothing. In any case, my supervisors would have to assume that I had at least tried. I approached with consideration of which I was able to two of the aforementioned old men.<br/>"Excuse me, the tourist office?"<br/>The old men looked at me without giving me an answer. They muttered something among themselves that, despite my efforts — which were not few — I could not understand. I made the resolution that I was not going to extract much information from these people. I shrugged my shoulders and walked away, fully aware that those old men were staring at me. They were too shocked to see a foreigner, and surely they were criticizing my way of dressing or any shit like that, but I was totally indifferent about it.<br/>And now what?<br/>I realized that I was very hot, and I needed something to cool off with. It had also been a few hours since my breakfast, a damn frugal snack, made up of just two chocolate buns, rich in palm oil and saturated fat. I approached the only open bar on the square with too great a hope that they would serve something to eat. I assumed, perhaps too optimistically, that my superiors would not see as a trait of incompetence the bad habit I had of continuing to eat and hydrate.<br/>The bar in question was one of those places where, if they weren't projecting football on television, it was because the tabloid news had become too important in those days. The old men no less disgusting than those in the square watched TV with veneration. Another news session that provided completely unnecessary details about the well-trodden Kóverax bandit business. Similar news encouraged the exchange of bullshit, in this specific case, especially regarding the "fag bandit."<br/>I then realized that the bar customers had interrupted their session of various nonsense to look at me. To look at me, not to greet me. They just whispered and wondered what the hell I was doing, a foreigner, there, in that pseudo-private sect. Similar bars only made sense to keep up with the same customers, day after day. An outsider altered the status quo of the establishment, and the Ananjo residents did not like that.<br/>But it was my right to enter. It was that, or fuck me. He supposed — and rightly so — that such a tiny village would have no supermarket. He guessed that at most there would be a RaskoBurger nearby; But, if I had been looked at strangely for asking for the tourist office, I didn't want to risk having to go through such an uncomfortable moment again looking for said establishment. Leaning my staff against the wall, I sat down at the bar with mild insolence and addressed the stunned waiter.<br/>"A RaskoCola, please."<br/>He served it to me without taking his eyes off me. It seemed that they had proposed to make me feel uncomfortable between silences and glances, in case it had not been more than clear that he was breaking into his natural habitat without permission. But, dammit, I was a client and I had money. I had fucking money. They couldn't deny me anything.<br/>I asked for a human meat burger, with a texture almost as viscous, greasy, and oozing as the one I always asked for at the RaskoBurger. I swallowed it with the help of the RaskoCola. The stale and excessively sugary taste of the soda added to the hot and palpable saturated fats of the burger brought me back to life. I smirked.<br/>But they kept looking at me, and it kept making me uncomfortable. I didn't have much idea about how to react. I then thought very strongly about my boss and all that bullshit he told me about how to react in situations like this.<br/>"You have to overcome that shyness, Garuga. You can't be scared of people. You have to talk to each other to make your way."<br/>Shyness? Shyness, son of a bitch? I wonder what he would say to be in my place. It wasn't shyness, it was fucking disgusting. It was not even to bear looking at those around me to have to speak to them. Every time those eyes fixed on me anguished me more. I simply tried to remain impassive. So I tried to follow a tactic similar to that of the ostrich, to find an excuse not to look at them, hoping that sooner or later they would stop looking at me. I took out my cell phone.<br/>As I had imagined, there was no Wi-Fi there. I had to take my staff for a moment and resort to a very simple spell to channel the internet. I got into the RaskoHeraldo and prayed that I had tons of new messages to occupy my time.<br/>Only two groups came, uninteresting and crammed with spam. If I hadn't gotten out of them, it was still pure sloth. For the rest, nothing interesting.<br/>That very morning I had sent two messages to Raltia. They were the extension of a talk that we had had days ago, but whose interest was decreasing more and more, much to my regret. I got into that chat and realized that she had left me in "seen". And, as if this were not enough, she was "online."<br/>I bit my lower lip angrily.<br/>However, what could I do? Everything about Raltia was taking on an obsessive hue. I had to assume it was happening to me. I couldn't have that ridiculous attitude… No, I had principles. I closed her chat. Garuga could be many things, but never a stalker. Stalker was the motherfucker Geiher...<br/>And, by stalking, he had gotten Raltia to “fall in love” with him and ask him to marry her.<br/>I cursed myself for having those kinds of thoughts. I couldn't blame Raltia. She was nothing more than a victim. However, wouldn't it also be male chauvinist to refer to her as a “victim”? I did not know, but I did not like the situation. I didn't like that one of my best friends was going to marry a fucking rapist. Maybe they were just my hobbies!<br/>I ended up, as always, blaming the environment. Something was wrong in a culture where marriage to rapists was seen as attractive. At times like this, I always ended up remembering with great nostalgia my father, Beir the Deaf-mute, a curmudgeonly wizard who had worked in countless independent mercenary gangs. He always said the same phrase: "Oh, oh, they're doing it wrong."<br/>He had worked for countless armies, and it was quite a sight to watch him wander through the camps while he checked the defenses. As his nickname indicated — long live the imagination! —he was deaf-mute, not because of birth problems, but because rival mercenaries had once tortured him to the point of ripping off both his ears and tongue. To understand others, therefore, he resorted to reading people's lips. But to make himself understood, he always had to use a method like little curious, consisting of a small spell with which he wrote messages in the air. While, as I said, he was walking through the camps, he always loved to write the same thing in capital and gigantic letters:<br/>"Oh, oh, they're doing it wrong!"<br/>And it was not a lie. Today's wizards, he told me, were spoiling. There was a lot of stupidity within the zaibatsus. Magic itself was being distorted, being replaced by mere superstitions. Mercenary gangs left gargantuan sums of money on magical resources that weren't fucking "magical" shit. They were useless gadgets that were worthless, but good marketing and an extremely superstitious society allowed an impressive amount of uselessness to be marketed. My father had to be forced many times to defend locations with magic barriers that did not work, to assault cities with no more resources than a hundred magic rings that did not work either, and a lot of other nonsense that right now I prefer not to remember. The magicians of today were truly ridiculous, and if they did not die with the expected speed under such unfortunate circumstances it was because those of the rival side were almost always the same or more superstitious. My father always maintained that magic, like physics or informatics, was a science, a fucking science, and it was governed by empirical principles.<br/>"Oh, oh, they're doing it wrong!"<br/>Wizards all over the world were doing it wrong, of course. However… Thinking of cases like Raltia's, were wizards really the only ones doing it wrong? Was it not humanity, where it was found? Interpersonal relationships, of course, didn't work. We didn't get along well with each other and there was a lot of garbage. How else to explain that situation? He was glaring at the cell phone. Seeing how Raltia left me in "seen" despite being "online". A woman who was going to marry a misogynist rapist precisely because he was a rapist and a misogynist. But it was, in any case, her decision. I had to respect her. I had no right to claim Raltia despite being more gentle with her. And yet there I was, waiting for her response like an asshole, infuriating me for not having it. I believed I had some kind of claim on Raltia just because I was a better person than the  motherfucker Geiher. For being decent as everyone should be. For having done something that should not be rewarded, but normalized. I was so ... That I believed I had rights and felt a certain atrocious rage. That's how stupid I was. A product of a shitty society that did not know how to create magical barriers in conditions ... Nor create men capable of overcoming internalized misogyny. I was just a fucking product of the patriarchy. In short, shit.<br/>A male chauvinist who, in addition, was pretending to be a feminist. I claimed the rights of women whenever I could, but when I had the chance, I was the first to violate them. So I was like that. And the worst thing is that I was fully aware. My self-control was nil. I kept looking at the cell phone insistently. Finally, I assumed that Raltia was passing me by and closed her chat. Then I noticed that Cirea, my choice B, had just read my message. Cirea, the girl who was helping me so much with anxiety. Sometimes I dreamed of being able to focus on her and forget about Raltia for the fucking time. She had trained me in feminism — or at least she had tried. The result? A fucking asshole like I was, who had gone from being a plain oppressor macho to being an oppressive macho who also reproached others for being one, believing me to have a non-existent moral superiority.<br/>Anyway.<br/>Thinking about Cirea made me realize that she was relapsing into those micromachisms that she spoke to me so much about. Although the idea that she had also left me in "seen" caused me anxiety, I closed the RaskoHerald, trying to take refuge in my father's words. The culture sucked, what to expect from a world that relied on superstition to create magical barriers? The world was scum, and therefore so was I.<br/>All that streak of self-loathing was interrupted by the bartender, who still didn't quite understand my presence and didn't understand why he wasn't leaving his bar.<br/>"Hey, are you the new magic teacher at Ananjo high-school?"<br/>But what?<br/>On that occasion, it was I who showed little understanding of the question.<br/>"Excuse me, I'm not a teacher," I replied.<br/>"We've seen you cast a spell before."<br/>Oh sure, it all made sense. I had forgotten that I was dealing with a fucking gang of hicks who probably didn't know that there was a world beyond her shitty town. They saw me cast a spell and thought I was a magic teacher. In all likelihood they would think I was a hacker from watching me download a video game.<br/>"The spell I made earlier," I replied, trying to be patient, "is a very simple spell and well known in RaskoCentral. Even the kids there know how to throw it… and even better than me."<br/>"Are you not a magician, then?" The waiter insisted, confused.<br/>"I'm as much of a magician as you can be. I know very few spells. And, for how bad I know how to launch them, it would be better for me not to know any."<br/>"But… Your staff…"<br/>What? Oh, I understand. It hadn't occurred to me that these people might be struck by my staff. I looked myself up and down for more flashy items that might excite the imagination of that redneck empire. I realized then that I was wearing sunglasses, and I was freaked out. If by seeing me with a staff casting a spell - a spell to channel Wi-Fi! - they already thought that I was a powerful magician, by seeing me with sunglasses they would think that, in addition, I was a high-ranking agent of the RaskoCOPS Intelligence Services.<br/>At RaskoCentral it was entirely logical to carry a gun on the street. At least, it was logical if you wanted to live a little. If you didn't want a ruffian to assault you at the slightest bit of change. There were vending machines that sold guns, greatswords, and staves. It didn't matter if you knew how to handle the weapons or not: carrying them was enough. If you wore a staff like mine, you didn't just get them to make dirty jokes about I don't know what about wanting to make up for a small penis; you got the ruffians freaked out. The staff, by the way, had belonged to my father, and in his hands, it had been able to generate blizzards of ice that devastated entire armies. But in my hands, I had to give thanks if the spell to channel Wi-Fi worked.<br/>"No, the staff carried it by…" I stopped.<br/>What was I explaining to them now? They weren't going to understand anything.<br/>"In RaskoCentral everyone carries staffs, even if they don't understand much about magic," I tried to justify, even if it wasn't entirely true. "But I only know very basic spells, I insist. I am not a magic teacher."<br/>The idea of being a "teacher" just made me gag. Education was fucking shit in the entire Rasko Domain. Being a teacher implied abiding by an abominable methodology. However, being a magic teacher was especially aberrant. Teaching magic in primary and secondary school was something truly vomiting. As a good son of a mercenary, I had been lucky enough to homeschool with the teaching droid my father bought me. But I still remember the time when Raltia was in high school and she would spend whole afternoons locked up at home, racking her brains to learn how to change the color of pencils. They were teaching her worthless junk for the sole purpose of being able to evaluate her easily. But she swallowed it all with her terrible childish enthusiasm. Ever since she was discovered at the age of twelve that she was a Chosen One, everything related to her magic aroused in her an enthusiasm, in my opinion, ridiculous.<br/>I tried to stop thinking about Raltia and somehow end this insufferable conversation.<br/>"I have not studied magic, but geography," I explained. "But I'm not a geography teacher either. I work for RaskoLeisure, not for RaskoTeach. Specifically, I work in the Tourism Area. My superiors intend to build a theme park in this town.<br/>The customers looked at each other, whispering something that got on my nerves. I really wished that no questions would come about what a theme park was.<br/>"But, What are you telling me?" Said one of the patrons mockingly.<br/>I knew it. I knew it, dammit. I wasn't going to end that day without some motherfucker making fun of me. I had a lot of faith.<br/>"The theme park will create a lot of jobs and help improve Ananjo's economy," I justified myself.<br/>"But what theme park are you going to set up here? Look, it gives me that you are in the wrong town..."<br/>If it weren't for my supervisors monitoring me, I would have responded with some inordinate rude thing. But I bit my tongue and was wrong.<br/>"Look, I don't see any sense in it either, you know. But my superiors insist on building the theme park."<br/>"But in Ananjo? In Ananjo? Here?"<br/>"Yes."<br/>"But why here? Thematic? Thematic of what? What topic?"<br/>"The theme park, from what my superiors have told me, would have a setting related to the cromlyrite cult."<br/>"What?"<br/>Now it was time to explain what the cromlyrite cult was when I didn't even know for sure what it was. Great!<br/>"The bandits of Kóverax," I said, pointing at the TV. "That bunch of mad elves practiced a strange religion, the cromlyrite cult. That religion drove them crazy."<br/>Then I stopped my explanation. To the best of my knowledge of geography, the Cromlyrite religion had existed in some areas of the Rasko Domain, but it was now nearly extinct. A certain travel book mentioned Ananjo as one of the few towns where it was still practiced. Travel books, in any case, are not usually a very reliable source, unless the reader is looking for endless nonsense far from reality. That book in question was taken into account by my boss, who came up with the nonsense of sending me to investigate. But I was realizing that, indeed, the book was saying nothing but bullshit. Those poor villagers had nothing to do with the religion of the bandits on TV.<br/>"And why here?" They said to me. "What do we have to do with the crazy people on TV?"<br/>If I think about it before ...<br/>Given the circumstances, I didn't have many options left. I could try to explain to them about the travel book that got me there, but they probably wouldn't understand shit. Or I could put all the blame on my boss, much simpler. "My boss has sent me here because he says that this town is full of crazier sectarians than those on TV." The truth is that I really wish I could say that. I would be exempted from any responsibility to these people. But my boss was monitoring me, and he wouldn't fucking like it. He would fire me. It was not viable. He was playing something else.<br/>"I am told there are Chromlyrite cultists in this town," I finally said.<br/>"I have been told". Skipping the subject. My boss couldn't complain. Whatever he complained… No, it didn't make sense. It was right. Ihad released my responsibility without blaming any superior, hadn't I?<br/>"But that's impossible. Crazy guys like the ones on TV here in Ananjo? No man no. Whoever told you that is an asshole lost."<br/>He was right. My boss wasn't just there; he was a lost asshole. But the insult had not come from my mouth, but from his.<br/>It was time to close that absurd conversation.<br/>"From what they say in the news," I said wearily, "the cromlyrite cult was an elven religion. Are there no elves in this town?"<br/>The customers looked at each other in surprise. For a moment I came to believe that they were going to ask me what an elf was. I swear, I came to think that.<br/>"No, there are no elves here… Never, come on," they finally told me. "Well, once upon a time there was one ... Who married the one who had a business to keep the money. Then they moved ... And I don't know much else."<br/>Perfect. He had very evident evidence that there was nothing in Ananjo related to that cult. For not having, there were no elves. I could get out of that fucking place. He would have to wait for another shitty bus, but it didn't matter. My boss would discover that at least he had done everything in my power.<br/>"Well," the waiter put in after a while, "Proad was an elf, wasn't he?"<br/>Oh shit.<br/>"Who is Proad?" I interjected, with a certain grumpiness.<br/>"Proad ... Proad ... Human, of course, he is not. Well, hey, I do think he's an elf, ”one of the regulars said. "They refer to him as 'the tech priest', but I don't know if he has anything to do with that religion. He's pretty nuts, of course. He is a computer and technology geek. I think, in fact, that the nickname comes from there. People go to see it when electronic gadgets break down. I also think that he is something of a psychologist… I never understood him well, but they say that it is good to go see him if you have problems. You know, head problems. I think he understands something."<br/>Great description, wow. So fucking great that it allowed me to smell from afar that this Proad, elf as he was, had nothing to do with the Cromlyrite cult. Then it was irrelevant to see him for the mission that had been assigned to me. But I knew my boss well and I was sure how much the bastard was going to hit me if he didn't do something. "No, look, Garuga, you could have gone to see that tech-priest, who might know something." Motherfucker. Proad would be a fucking geek with no interest in society, but I had to go see him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Garuga the Ravager: The Tech-Priest (Part 2)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Proad's cabin was located on the outskirts of that miserable town. It caught my attention that it was covered by solar panels. A practical remedy for energy, but illegal. Rasko's oil companies had offered a large reward for the heads of all users of renewable energy.<br/>However, it was very difficult for the knights of RaskoCOPS to search in a place in the middle of nowhere. This Proad did not seem to be a fool. But if the theme park was finally built, the bargain wasn't going to last long.<br/>The situation was, therefore, the following: I was going to the house of an innocent with the sole purpose of sinking his life. I tried to justify myself morally by stating that it certainly had nothing to do with the cromlyrite cult. It was not enough, so I decided to repeat insistently that I was nothing but an extension of the will of my boss.<br/>Delegating responsibility for our actions to motherfuckers can be more beneficial to our mental health than ordinary people realize.<br/>I knocked on the door. In a little while, an "elf" opened up for me, if he could be called that. I'm not sure how the creature I ran into there should be rated. From the waist up he could pass for an elf. He had certain mechanical prosthetics, but he was a fundamentally biological being. From the waist down, however, everything changed. He was a machine, indisputably. Mechanical circuits sprouted from where his heart should have been and stretched downward. Instead of legs, he had four mechanical grips that folded at his will. I have to admit that he gave me a lot of grief. However, there was a sympathetic, goofy expression on his chubby, bearded face. You can't say that I disliked him, at least not as much as the scum who lived in Ananjo.<br/>"Good afternoon," he said cheerfully.<br/>"Good afternoon. My name is Garuga. I work for RaskoLeisure, and, as I have been told, you can be of use to us for a certain business of ours."<br/>Yes, I think it was convenient to start with ambiguous detours. Going first, asking him to give me information about the cromlyrite cult to build an amusement park and screw the autonomy acquired with solar panels was not very wise.<br/>"Perfect," he replied, with an incomprehensible smile. "How can I help you, Garuga? I warn you that I have no interest in signing a contract of any kind."<br/>We lived in a world where people with careers spent their afternoons throwing curricula at all RaskoCentral businesses and not getting anything. Only a fortunate few had the opportunity to sign a contract and in truly regrettable condition. If that guy thought that businesses were going to come to his house asking him to sign contracts, that was the graphic definition of having faith.<br/>"We have no intention of doing business with you. We just want you to give us certain information. I can pay you if necessary."<br/>And it could. My diets allowed it. For a facility that my boss had given me, I had to make the most of it.<br/>"I'm not interested in money," he replied, shrugging.<br/>Fuck. A hippie. For a moment it seemed more bearable to put up with the bullshit of the people of Ananjo than the ravings of a wacky elf.<br/>"And what interests you?" I said, without much patience.<br/>"Nothing in particular. But I don't have much information to offer either. No more than you can find on the internet."<br/>It was time to give details. The information regarding the cromlyrite cult that my boss had obtained was, in his opinion, insufficient. That was why he had sent me to contact cultists of a practically non-existent religion. I armed myself with patience. I'd ask about the cromlyrite cult, say no, and get out of there. I was probably getting a very justified rant about racial prejudice towards elves in the process. I would say that the fact that four mad elves with strange religions and killing people are on the news does not have to imply that all elves are the same. And he would be right. But I would accept the fight with all the humility in the world and I would get out of there.<br/>"I'd like to know as much as possible about the cromlyrite cult."<br/>He looked at me stunned. It was expected.<br/>"You know what it is, don't you?"<br/>"Of course I know what it is. I myself am a cromlyrite cultist!"<br/>Great. He had taken my so-called racial biases the wrong way and now he was giving me that. I couldn't blame him.<br/>"I'm sorry if I offended you, I just wanted..."<br/>"Offended me why?"<br/>"For having come to think that, as an elf, you would have some kind of relationship with that cult. I understand that it can be interpreted as racism..."<br/>"Racism or not, your assumptions have been correct. I am a cromlyrite cultist."<br/>Hey? There was not a hint of irony in his voice. He looked too dumb to be ironic. How could that be possible? Was he a true cultist? A mad elf, like the ones on TV? If so, I could already run.<br/>"What surprises me is that you know something about the cromlyrite cult," he continued.<br/>Hello?<br/>"No ... you're not making fun of me, are you?" I said, somewhat suspicious.<br/>"Making fun of you for what? How did you know that a cultist lived in this town? Heretics are not usually interested in these kinds of questions."<br/>"I read in a travel book that in this town there were ..."<br/>"You mean The Rislip Route? I met Rislip myself! He was spending time in this house."<br/>Fuck. He was a true cultist.<br/>The book that had guided me to that shitty town was precisely that, The Rislip Route. In fact, the information he provided was extremely scarce. He only said that "he passed through Ananjo, where I met people who practiced the cromlyrite cult, a very peculiar religion." Just a rather ambiguous line that he hadn't given much credit to until now.<br/>The book was right. There were real cultists in Ananjo. I freaked out and looked around me. I had to get out of there anyway before he blew my brains out.<br/>"What's wrong? I notice you scared."<br/>I couldn't take it anymore. I ran away.<br/>"Hey, wait! I'm not going to hurt you!" He yelled at me, concerned. "I don't hurt anyone. You can ask anyone in town. I don't know what they told you about the cultists, but I, specifically, am completely harmless! Rislip I don't think he said anything bad about me!"<br/>He really hadn't said anything bad. But nothing good either.<br/>I turned around, puzzled.<br/>"Harmless? Fuck! After Kóverax, I think it's normal for one to freak out a little!"<br/>"Koverax? What is Kóverax?"<br/>Was that guy wavering me?<br/>"Koverax, the castle of Kóverax… The one that keeps making the news, damn it!"<br/>"Oh, I understand! You will have to update me. I don't watch the news!"<br/>I didn't really watch the news or TV in general either. But the people around me wouldn't stop talking about that shit. That guy, however, didn't seem to have people around him. In the background I envied him.<br/>"Come on, come to my cabin and tell me. I don't know what happened in that castle, but I can assure you that I am completely harmless."<br/>Without completely losing my caution, I agreed to enter. His hut was a rather modest and messy den, crammed with electronic gadgets. I took a deep breath and sat where I could.<br/>"Tell me, friend. What is this Kóverax? We cultists hadn't been on the news since before you were born."<br/>"It's really nothing that serious, but it's been given a lot of hype. Too much, I would say. They were a simple group of elven bandits who had taken over an abandoned castle and were looting. Apparently, they also practiced that religion, the cromlyrite cult, and had orgies, I don't know. In any case, the population was very afraid of this whole issue.<br/>"First news I have on all this," Proad muttered. "I understand that there are cultists who are dedicated to looting. There are bandits of all religions. But not all cultists are like that. I am a tech-priest. I live in peace, with my machines and my independence, and I don't hurt anyone."<br/>As on many other occasions, the news had bubbled up something truly insignificant. I snorted.<br/>"So we're talking about a normal religion that's not sinister at all," I concluded.<br/>"That's. Rather than religion, I prefer to speak of an ancient elven tradition. Few of us continue to practice it."<br/>From what he told me, it looked like a normal, boring cult. Some druidic tree-worshiping shit or something. No orgies, no killing, no human sacrifice. Nothing morbid. No material to carry out a theme park.<br/>I thanked him for everything and got out of there. Enough had seen. The idea of my boss had been nonsense from the beginning, but that confirmed it. I decided to call him on the phone and tell him that.<br/>"Tell me?"<br/>"I'm Garuga. I'm calling to inform you that ..."<br/>"Garuga, I'm getting a little busy right now. Could you call me later?"<br/>"It is very necessary. You see, since you are monitoring me, are you aware of everything that is happening to me?"<br/>Before answering, there was a sigh from my boss on the other end of the receiver.<br/>"At the moment I'm attending to other matters. All your activity has been recorded and I intended to scrutinize it later. Tell me, what happened so urgent?<br/>"It turns out that Rislip's book was indeed right. I have been able to find a cromlyrite cultist. However, he doesn't seem like a dangerous guy. From what he has told me, his religion is a very old elven cult and has nothing to do with the bandits of Kóverax. I'm not sure if it's true amusement park material. Despite the fact that the cromlyrite cult had several crazy followers, it is a religion devoid of curiosity for the general public. They are just elven rites. Forest moves. Nothing dark, or evil, or morbid. No orgies or human sacrifices; that was something of the bandits, not of religion. Nothing flashy. Nothing that leads to building an amusement park."<br/>Unless, of course, my boss decided to go through for the lining of the whole truth. He could do it without problems. He could make up whatever he wanted about the cromlyrite cult and build his fucking amusement park, based on morbid, on lies, on what people wanted to hear. The population did not have an exhaustive historicist desire either. They weren't going to question what the big opinion said.<br/>However, my boss wanted more morbid. He was monitoring me not only to check that he was doing my work but also to make a documentary with all the images taken directly from my retinas. That documentary would bring him great financial benefits and would generate a considerable publicity for the theme park.<br/>However, why not make a fake documentary directly? Very simple: because it was cheaper for them to hire an asshole like me part-time, to collect real testimonies to manipulate them later, instead of editing a documentary from scratch. In any case, at Proad's house, there was no juicy material to do anything. Not even manipulating the images captured by my retinas could capture something shocking. The cultist was nothing more than a poor computer-savvy elf. There was no point in staying there. I strongly wished my boss would see reason and give me permission to leave.<br/>"Garuga, Garuga," he said to me, with that condescension of his that he so loathed, "do you think that if a cultist really practiced dark and bloody rituals he would show them to you just like that? I do not think so. The cultist is giving you long. He's pretending to be a normal guy to get you to go away. But you have to stay. You have to earn his trust."<br/>I have to?<br/>I didn't know if my boss had an overflowing imagination or if he was just an idiot. The point is that he wanted to get from where there was none and I had to pay for it.<br/>"I insist," I said, somewhat desperately, "the cultist is nothing more than a poor computer fetishist. He's a normal guy who ..."<br/>"Try to gain his trust. Tell him that you want to learn and you will see how he hides something else. For now, I have to hang up. Other matters demand me. Remember: we are monitoring you. Don't ever skip work. Go back to the cultist's house and insist until you get something out of him. Goodbye."<br/>And the motherfucker hung up on me.<br/>Perfect. It was his turn to bother that poor elf again. What if he sent me to hell, what? Did I put a gun to his head to tell me the secrets of his religion? He started to give me some anxiety. Fuck…<br/>I assumed that I had to go back and that I had no other choice. I took a deep breath and tried to mentalize myself for that crap. I sat down and tried to tell myself that nothing particularly bad had to happen. I took out my cell phone and looked to see if I had any new messages that could cheer me up after that horrible situation.<br/>Nothing at all. It was still in "seen". Raltia passed me by. And, as if this were not enough, Cirea had also left me in "seen". I got into the chat with the latter and discovered that she was "online" and that she had read my message ten minutes ago. But he stopped answering me. In Raltia's case, he could understand it, because it had been a fairly closed message, a statement. But he had asked Cirea a question that demanded an answer. A question that, by the way, was very important to me. And she, however, passed.<br/>But what the hell was she doing? Who the hell believed me to be worthy of anyone's attention? I was a fucking asshole under the orders of another asshole who was about to do the biggest bullshit of his life, but I was scared and started looking at my cell phone and lamenting that they were not listening to me. An attitude worthy of a fucking wanker, of teenage emo. I was disgusting.<br/>I got up and went back to Proad's cabin. I was even envious of that wacky elf. He sure didn't have half the problems I had.<br/>Proad received me with a smile as happy as the previous one. That made me uncomfortable. I was used to the grimaces of disgust, the looks of hatred, the sarcastic and cruel attitudes. However, that guy seemed to be smiling with all the sincerity in the world. He didn't hide anything behind, and that puzzled me. He was not used to dealing with nice people. He preferred the usual borderline found throughout the Rasko Domain. He knew more or less how to behave around someone who had an unpleasant or interested attitude. But that apparent simplicity was beyond my comprehension.<br/>"Is something wrong, friend?" The elf said to me.<br/>Friend? Anyway.<br/>"You see…" Now what? "I've been thinking better of it, and I think I'd like to know more about your religion."<br/>Sure you do, Garuga. Telling him that "I would like to record a fucking documentary at your house without your consent to plant a fucking theme park in this shitty town that puts you in the crosshairs of the RaskoCOPS so they can execute you for using solar panels" would sound very cheeky, wouldn't it?<br/>"Really?" He replied with an enthusiasm beyond human comprehension. "Oh, that's great! Come in, come in! What exactly do you want to know?"<br/>"Hey? I don't know…" Which answer would my boss be more satisfied with? "Everything."<br/>I was afraid of how that situation would end ...<br/>"Everything? Oh, great! But learning all about the cromlyrite cult is a laborious task. An explanation is not enough. You will have to stay at my house for a while to really learn.<br/>He was opening the doors of his house to a guy who, indirectly, was going to fuck him as hard as he could. It was grotesque.<br/>"I appreciate your offer, but I'll have to settle for an interview. I don't have the money to stay here long."<br/>And it was not a lie.<br/>"Money? Money! Friend, you won't need the money."<br/>Putting up with his wacky hippie bullshit wasn't going to do my sanity any good.<br/>"I'll have to eat something, right?" I said, trying very hard not to sound rude. <br/>"Food…! What times were those when he needed food to survive! This should not be a problem. There was a time when it was easier for people to get food than money. Everything has changed, it is very clear ... But I can do something. I think if you give me time, I can set up a resequencer ... I have the magic and the knowledge to do it."<br/>That poor fool no longer caused me discomfort, but compassion. As a rational and life-hardened person, it was entirely logical for me to be skeptical of the possibility of making a very expensive contraption capable of feeding an entire family for all eternity. I didn't think this guy could make a resequencer. But his sole intention was worthy of compassion. Build a thing that could sell for millions just so I could be at his house? I came to think that Proad felt very lonely and only wanted a friend.<br/>But he had chosen wrong. I was not going to be his friend. I was a motherfucker, a toxic man you couldn't get anything good out of. I was just going to take advantage of him. What I was very clear about was that I couldn't create the resequencer. Although he didn't want a conflict for that either. I just wanted my boss to leave me alone. A modest ambition, right?<br/>"It's okay."<br/>I resolved to stay with the elf until I ran out of dietary money. It was crystal clear that he was not going to create any resequencer. Perhaps he would blow up the house in the attempt. I assumed it and did not care too much. I also didn't have much in the outside world to live for.<br/>"From now on, Garuga, your apprenticeship will begin," he said, leading me into a room full of electronic gossip. "You will start in the cromlyrite cult. You will have to learn a lot and progress. You will have to be patient and upright. Therefore, you will have to be, above all, disciplined."<br/>All that talk sounded like something out of a cheap hero movie, the kind that didn't make any sense in reality. Or worse, the youth novels that Raltia was so passionate about. In short, of fantastic and absurd stories. Proad seemed like a walking cliche, to tell the truth. He seemed like the typical wise and eccentric teacher who sets out to train a reckless young hero in order for him to be ready to save the world. The words they used were worthy of appearing in any juvenile novel dealing with such twisted matters as saving worlds that had neither head nor tail.<br/>But I wasn't going to save any world. There was no world to save. Domain Rasko was somewhat pathetic and vomiting. And the rest of the planet wasn't much different either, to be honest. If a horde of demons emerged from the abyss to destroy everything, stopping them would not be heroic, but immoral.<br/>So I thought. In fantasy novels, the presence of divinities, ostentatious, and assholes almost always, was very common, who used to choose the dumbest one from among all mortals to carry out their wishes. That's how they used to start. Then came more uninteresting fucking shit, and then the hackneyed part of the teacher educating the hero. Was I the hero and was Proad the teacher? Was I living in a junior novel? Because, if so, the gods had seriously mistaken their choice. I was an asshole, a very asshole, but not an impressionable asshole. I never considered that an act like saving the world made sense. I insist that it would be more ethical to allow the world to explode at the hands of bloodthirsty demons.<br/>There was nothing to lose. That is the crux of the matter. There was nothing to lose.<br/>I lie: it depends on the person, there could be something to lose. But too many requirements had to be met. Being human, rich, white, male, straight, cisgender, and lacking functional diversity. I know all that and maybe, and I emphasize the maybe, you will have something to lose. Don't have one of those seven things and you'll be screwed. You'll be screwed, I think so. You will screw up a lot. Like me, wow. Of all those requirements, I only met five, and they seemed insufficient to stop considering human life as the fucking shit it really was.<br/>With such bitterness, I went through life. Under those circumstances, how could I manage to be nice? My boss asked me to be. The very little education my father had given me, too. After all, the elf was being very polite to me. But I couldn't help but reply with my usual sarcasm.<br/>"If you want to teach me cheap philosophy about prudence and discipline to save the world, elf friend, please don't bother," I said. WI'm not going to save any world. And don't insist on me. This is not a video game in which there are no more options to say yes so that the fucking game can move forward. This is real life. And…"<br/>And that? I was going to drop some stupid stick "and I can get out if you break my balls." And I could do it if I wasn't being monitored by the bastard of a thousand whores who was my boss. Thrilling. I assumed that Proad was going to send me to fuck after that free tone on my part. I also assumed that, therefore, I was going to be fired and I was going to go directly back to be an unemployed guy. I prepared myself for the worst.<br/>But Proad was not mad. Unlike. He was laughing. He was losing his mind. I hoped he wasn't for me.<br/>"How great you are, Garuga! You're absolutely right! I was sounding very pathetic… I looked like a hermit from a B movie! No, Garuga, I do not intend to grant you great abilities to save any world."<br/>A great relief to know that I wasn't going to have to be part of a ridiculous pantomime to keep my boss satisfied.<br/>"I know you intend to gain knowledge of elven culture for fully commercial purposes," he continued with a smile.<br/>He had penetrated me. I didn't know whether to be alarmed or relieved. Alarmed because, knowing my intentions, it was still likely that I was going to fuck off from there. And relieved to discover that Proad, geek as he was, was not quite mentally retarded. Although I do not know if it is too able-ist to use terms like "mentally retarded" to talk about these issues. Having a father with functional diversity, whether you like it or not, makes you feel a little bit aware of able-ism. But it was so ridiculous that I couldn't find a better term. And, therefore, it was able-ist. And so I turned out to be a fucking asshole and a great son of a bitch. "Son of a bitch". Mysoginism and whorephobia in a single phrase. A single phrase that also happened to be my favorite phrase. The most listened to by all those who committed the madness of relating to me.<br/>I, Garuga, was scum. That mission was going to go wrong for me, they were going to kick me out of work, I was going to starve to death and the world was going to be better off without a cocksucker like me. I tried to focus on these ideas to stop giving importance to the pressure on my chest and my breathing, which had become forced and difficult.<br/>“But whatever your motives,” Proad continued, “it is always a pleasure to have the opportunity to make the cromlyrite cult known to Heretics like you. Perhaps, with good luck, your way of seeing the world will change."<br/>Oh, that would be fine with you, huh, motherfucker? This would prevent the knights of the RaskoCOPS from inflating you with bullets while dismantling your precious and illegal solar panels after the construction of the theme park.<br/>The elf kept looking in that kind of storage room, taking out every two for three more and more bizarre devices. It wasn't clear to me what the hell he was doing: he only saw one cable here, another there, nuts, bolts, connections… Apparently, he was mounting something. Supposedly a resequencer. But that was impossible. He would assemble some useless thing that, if he didn't blow up the cabin, it would be a miracle.<br/>Finally, the construction of it apparently came to an end. After pressing a button, he turned on a screen and smirked.<br/>"I'm installing some programs for him to work," he said. "After that, the resequencer will be ready again."<br/>"Sure."<br/>Proad seemed unfazed by my utter skepticism. In fact, I think he didn't even grasp my skeptical attitude. He was still with that goofy smile.<br/>"While they settle in, if you want, I'll take you to my other room."<br/>I shrugged and followed him. I have nothing better to do. His other room was a veritable pigsty. He looked like a fucking teenage nerd. Everything was full of useless gossip, old comics and ridiculous videogames, as well as candy wrappers and snacks. It smelled fucking bad and was full of flies. The room was presided over by a gigantic computer, on top of which was a poster - quite ridiculous by the way - that showed something like an elf with a gigantic sword.<br/>Proad turned on the computer and waited eagerly for his very old team to log in. That face of illusion I had not put on since I was a child.<br/>"To save time, I'll show you all my video games!"<br/>What I was missing. This torture was going to be unbearable. Back then I preferred, and I'm totally serious, for Proad to be a gritty, dark cultist like the bandits of Kóverax. I prayed that he had an evil plan up his sleeve. For that mad elf to drug me and then open up the channel seemed a much happier prospect than having to put up with how I played his fucking video games.<br/>"By the way," he said, as the PC finished getting started, "if you want to learn about the cromlyrite cult you will have to follow a series of rules."<br/>Fuck off. Was it so difficult to understand that at that moment I had enough agony to abide by some ridiculous norms of a geek? I figured there was going to be some "kneel down to my comics every time you walk into my room" bullshit was coming. And I'm not assuming exaggerations. There are such people in the darkest corners of Rasko Central. I swear. I have seen it.<br/>Fucking scum.<br/>"If you want to become a cromlyrite, friend Garuga, you will have to break ties with everything that believes you Dependency. Therefore, I have inadvertently taken care of taking everything you depend on when you enter this room."<br/>"If not? I haven't seen you put your metal claws in my pockets. And I would advise you, for your own good, not to. In any case, I neither smoke nor do I take drugs. I don't have any such dependencies. I have a clear mind and all those fucking shits that hermits in the movies say."<br/>"That you say. But you're nervous and you can be seen coming. You've been terribly nervous since you've arrived. And you don't take your hand out of your pocket. You do not stop feeling your mobile phone. For something it will be, right?"<br/>According to Raltia, what I have with my cell phone was something like a kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I fucking disgust that people believe they have the right to psychoanalyze me. Raltia could pass it, but Proad ...?<br/>"I have no dependence of any kind on my mobile phone," I said bluntly.<br/>"I don't doubt it," he replied, smiling. "Otherwise, believe me, I would have managed to get you to put down that thing before you came in here. I have not done that, however. I have only taken from you what you depend on. The Dependency is the beginning of heresy. Never forget."<br/>I do not know if Proad was drugged, but I did not perceive that any of my personal belongings had disappeared. I gripped my cell phone tightly, defiantly.<br/>"I insist that I have no problem with your phone. I have a collection of cell phones! Do you want to see it?"<br/>A death stare was enough for his answer.<br/>"No? Okay. By the way, take this cable and connect it to your mobile and my computer. I would like to transfer you a great video game. I love mobile games!"<br/>I figured I had to pass the time with something. I agreed, avoiding showing enthusiasm, and soon I had a new application on my mobile. The little game was pretty typical, a pretty crappy graphics resource management online, but entertaining. I was with him for a long time while I listened to Proad's nonsense. Then I got bored and opened the RaskoHerald, somewhat nervous if I had messages from Raltia or Cirea.<br/>I realized then that I was offline. This was weird. In Proad's house, the internet was not lacking; rather, there was plenty. It was unloading I don't know what moved at that precise moment, in fact. And until a few seconds ago I was with the online game.<br/>I tried to get out of the RaskoHerald and got into the game. In the game, the internet worked perfectly. I rebooted the RaskoHerald and it still didn't work. I assumed that the application servers were down, so I shrugged my shoulders and opened SecureHerald, a messaging service very similar to RaskoHerald, with which I could also contact Cirea. It was an application, in principle, better than Rasko's official one, because it had a privacy policy that was more committed to the user and because everything was better optimized, but no one uses it, except for some exceptions, like Cirea and I .<br/>My surprise was enormous when I realized that that other application did not work either. This was weird. Was only the fucking Proad game working? Had you set up your internet to just work that shit? I believed him capable, of course. Somewhat desperately I opened a dating app to flirt with — which, by the way, I've never had some success. It didn't work either. I opened my mail and more of the same. Fuck. I tried to open another shitty online game with which I entertained myself in my spare time ...<br/>And it worked.<br/>What the hell? Did only the games work, or what? It was a very strange situation. Very rare. I had no history of anything like that. That stressed me out. I get really stressed. And, as I always did when faced with such a situation, it occurred to me to call Cirea.<br/>It didn't work. What the fuck I figured I didn't have my mobile available. I tried another contact. My friend Chetri? My friend Chetri, come on. It didn't work either. I tried directly — and much to my regret — with Raltia, whose cell phone was with another company that always had coverage.<br/>And neither were the calls.<br/>But what the fuck? Why the calls? I understood that the internet was not working, but the calls were related to coverage, not the internet. How could they not work? It was absurd and inexplicable. It was up to the eggs. For some reason, I had been completely cut off from the rest of the world, excluding four fucking internet trolls who were insulting me in the online game.<br/>"Fuck!" I roared.<br/>Proad passed me. He was still absorbed, telling me about the operation of his new deck in an online card game, a matter that, as was evident, in those circumstances - and in general - was absolutely indifferent to me.<br/>"Proad, what the hell! What the fuck happened to my cell phone?"<br/>"Your cell phone works perfectly," he answered, without losing his disgusting smile.<br/>"But if half the apps don't work for me, fuck! And it won't let me call! Is this your thing, elf? What the hell have you done?"<br/>His response, from the start, was a pat on the shoulder. We started well, Proad. We got off to a good start, motherfucker. How hard was it to recognize when the bun oven was off? At that rate, he was going to end up taking an imminent host.<br/>"Take it easy, Garuga. Calm down. Let's see, what are you complaining about?"<br/>"That I'm incommunicado!" Do you know why the hell this happens? Is this your thing, or what?"<br/>"Of course it's my thing!"<br/>What the fuck<br/>Had Proad's brain just developed for some unknown reason the ability to handle irony? It was too unlikely. There was something that eluded me. How and why the hell did that fat fucking have to block those apps for me? And the most important of all…<br/>"Why the hell didn't you tell me before? Why are you telling me now? What the hell are you on, you fucking hippie?"<br/>"Tell you now?" He said, not showing any annoyance at my anger, "But I told you a long time ago and you haven't complained or anything!"<br/>"What? You are freaking out. I don't remember that ..."<br/>"I told you that in order to learn about the cromlyrite cult, I would have to requisition everything you felt a Dependency towards, and you seemed to agree!"<br/>"Okay, me? You are hallucinating. Wait, dependency? What the hell are you talking about?"<br/>He had said something about taking off my cell phone or not, I remembered that well. Did you mean blocking me only a few apps? That possibility was enormously hilarious, not because I was restricted to just one part of my cell phone — God knows how a wacky elf brain worked — but because I had the ability to do that without my realizing it. It seemed even more plausible that the apps weren't working for any other reason, and that the idiot was taking credit for himself that wasn't his.<br/>But what about the calls ...?<br/>"Friend Garuga, I'll be clear to you." Dependency is not on the mobile phone. Nor to applications that allow you to be in contact with the outside environment. Not even being able to call. Your Dependency, my friend, sticks to more specific issues ... Like those two women you are so obsessed with, Raltia and Cirea.<br/>That's when I really freaked out when I realized that stupid elf was not really stupid, but a resourceful bastard. Without even lifting a finger or doing anything to do so, I had shown that I had access not only to my mobile phone software but also to my brain.<br/>I felt, and rightly so, in danger. I thought about running out of there but knew that if he did, he was instantly going to be fired. Proad's hut had given me, at first, the impression of being a boring and uninteresting place, nothing morbid, nothing to do with the bandits of Kóverax. But he was in the den of an even more crappy guy. Everything that my retinas could record, monitored by RaskoOcio machines, was going to be worth his weight in gold. Running away was the most prudent thing to do, but if I did, my boss would take care not only of firing me but of deservingly cutting my balls off.<br/>That was juicy and morbid information. If everything went well, I would get a lot of money in the future. I steeled myself and tried to stay calm. Proad seemed like a crappy, maniacal guy, but a crappy, maniacal guy who liked me. If I didn't give him for using me as a guinea pig with which to do experiments worthy of the worst gore movie of the series Z, all this could have a pseudo-happy ending.<br/>"What the hell are you, man?" I said. "Are you a hacker? Or a psychic? How can you hack without leaving the site?"<br/>"I'm a Chromlyrite Tech-Priest," he explained. "That encompasses everything."<br/>"Fuck ... Are you aware of the amount of money you could get yourself working in the intelligence service of RaskoCOPS or any army?"<br/>That guy's only response was a shrug.<br/>"I told you I'm not interested in money."<br/>Minutes ago, I would have judged Proad a "fucking hippie" for such a phrase. But when he says the phrase has shown to have the powers that he had, you think about it. Proad wasn't a typical hippie, nerd, or hikikomori. He wasn't a daddy's boy who was paid for his crystal palace. He was a guy who, if he wanted to, could make enough people eat his cock. If he said he wasn't interested in money, he had his motives. With such power, why want money?<br/>The Tech-Priest wasn't a jerk. He was too smart a bastard.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Garuga the Ravager: The Tech-Priest (Part 3)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To relate everything that happened next would involve several problems. I don't think I'll ever be able to explain it clearly, because I didn't even understand it myself. I don't understand the reason for my behavior. I had no record of anything like that. Sometimes I have come to imagine that I was under the influence of drugs. Or what do I know ...<br/>The situation, at this point, was the following: I was at the home of a mad elf to record an advertising documentary for a future amusement park that my company was planning to build. I had just discovered that this elf was a guy with impressive power since he could read my mind and control my mobile phone. He had blocked communication with the two people that mattered most to me in this world, and I couldn't get out of there because my boss wanted everything to be recorded in detail. I had to stay there an indefinite amount of time attending the absurd preferences of that powerful and crappy guy.<br/>The absurd preferences of that powerful and crappy guy were basically based on three fundamental points: eating junk food, playing video games, and walking in the countryside. I'm not kidding. Those three activities. Nothing else. I did nothing else. I didn't do another fucking thing for two and a half weeks, supposedly to "learn the mysteries of the cromlyrite cult." And without being able to speak to Raltia or Cirea.<br/>I wasted time, a long time, and no one can deny it. And it was never, shall we say, very wise to waste time lightly. But I'll say something in my defense: the same way I foolishly wasted time, I didn't spend a fucking penny. As it turned out, the bastard Proad was right and the resequencer thing wasn't a bluff. The same day I arrived, he finished mounting that gossip, smashing what little skepticism I had. We then had at our disposal a junk whose price on the black market was equivalent to, more or less, ten kidneys. A gadget that could generate food in a practically unlimited way, that could get several families out of misery if it was used well. See it to believe it.<br/>Proad told me then that before he used to use that device a lot, at the time when he was still dependent on his physiological needs. Before transforming into a fucking cyborg that was enough energy from solar panels to start his body, Proad had been flesh and blood, but he was quite reluctant to depend on money and food. That is why the resequencer was manufactured in the first instance, to avoid being Dependent on the money. Much later, he decided that he too should avoid being a Food Dependent, and it was then that he underwent countless surgeries in order to stop being a biological entity.<br/>People will say that such behavior is typical of a mad guy. At first, I also saw him that way, but then I realized that it was not entirely accurate. Cyborgphobia was too implanted in society for us to realize that not all cyborgs were cold, inhuman creatures, devoid of feelings, and incapable of enjoying the worldly pleasures. Proad was neither of those things. He didn't need to eat, but his body was still prepared to assimilate food. His characteristic gigantic belly was good proof of that. According to him, he told me, it was his custom to gorge himself on wholesale pipes, chocolate buns, and hamburgers. And without fear of clogging his arteries, since his blood was dotted with nanorobots that are responsible for repairing any type of irregularity.<br/>People will say what they want, but Proad had put it together well. He seemed like a fucking genius to me. He had devised them to be able to contaminate his body with palm oil and trans fats without limits without feeling guilty about it. Wasn't it wonderful? Even more wonderful was the fact that none of his junk meals cost a single penny. Not only for the ones we generated with the resequencer, but for all the ones that the townspeople gave him. Many people even went to his hut to ask for help with computers or game consoles that had stopped working or were malfunctioning. Proad attended them without charging them a single penny and even seemed to enjoy it. People, out of deference, paid only what they want, but, as the tech-priest was not interested in money, those retributions consisted of more junk food. I also find it curious to comment that not only were they asking him for computer help, but that many of the people also used him as a psychologist. Proad had no fucking idea of psychology and he couldn't give more than four pseudo-hippie tips on the cromlyrite cult, the Dependency, and various uninteresting shits; however, people came to Proad only to satisfy themselves a very basic need for mental stability: to be heard. Also to be heard by an uncle with the face of a fool who never judged you, no matter how much you had a threesome with your four-year-old child and your dog. I think I more or less understand why it was efficient for psychological well-being.<br/>Perhaps this was the reason why time passed so quickly while I was there. Living with Proad was not an exciting or enriching experience, it did not bring me happiness or make me feel self-fulfilled, but it gave me something that I had never had before: peace. And I don't want to be judged as a hippie for saying things like that. Anyone who listens to me speaking for more than three minutes will know that my disgust for hippies is appalling. No, when I talk about Proad giving me peace, I mean another kind of peace. It has nothing to do with the artificial peace hippies get after smoking eight million joints. I'm talking about something else. I speak of something very difficult to explain to those who have not lived it.<br/>I'm talking about not having any contact with the women who obsessed me and not feeling anxious about it. At first, I was looking forward to getting out of there so I could get back into the RaskoHerald, eager to see if I had any new messages. But little by little I began to feel indifferent. Raltia and Cirea probably passed me by. I probably didn't stand a chance with either one, but what difference did it make? It was good at Proad's house. A good pizza and a few vices at the console made one forget everything. And I insist that you couldn't say I was happy either: I was just there, and I didn't need more. I was calm. And so, time passed me at the speed of light. If this was the cromlyrite cult, I wanted to be the most cromlyrite in the world.<br/>Soon I began to have problems with the perception of time. I couldn't tell if a minute, an hour, or a day had passed. Every moment there was just as peaceful. I had no desire to leave. I was comfortable, relaxed. What could the outside world offer me? I assumed I had to stay as long as Proad left me.<br/>I assumed then that my boss, who insisted so much that I get to the bottom of it all, wouldn't bother. Also, he wasn't spending me a penny of diet money. I insist that we got a good life for zero credits. I felt entitled to stay there as long as I deemed necessary.<br/>And Proad was in no hurry for him to leave. In fact, he once told me the following:<br/>"Anyway, Garuga, I don't think I can teach you more about the cromlyrite cult."<br/>It was a night in which we were lying in the middle of the field, watching the stars with silly faces. I solemnly swear that we had not smoked a joint; instead, we were damaging our health — at least I — with salt peanuts.<br/>"You know what I mean? That the cromlyrite cult seems like an fucking awesome thing to me,” I replied. "If this is the cromlyrite cult, I declare myself the greatest cromlyrite in the world."<br/>I insist that I had not smoked a joint. My mind was in a state of complete sobriety when I spoke those words.<br/>"Oh yeah? Are you the greatest cromlyrite in the world, Garuga? You've certainly changed a lot. Now tell me. What do you think of all the problems you had out there in the outside world?"<br/>"I don't care."<br/>"What do you think of Cromlyr? That is to say, of Death. What do you think if I tell you, what do I know, that you are going to die here and now?"<br/>"I don't care. I'm so calm that even that doesn't matter to me. Total, I'm not even going to be noticed!" <br/>I didn't think much of that answer, to tell the truth. I rushed a little. I couldn't say those things and be honest with my feelings. I was still too much of an asshole to be able to say such a thing without lying.<br/>"Oh yeah? Are you sure? So what if I told you that I give you the option of staying with me until you die of old age? And that you are not going to live anything but afternoons of video games and junk food to death? What would you say to me?"<br/>"That sounds like a fucking awesome thing to me. Would you let me stay here?"<br/>"Of course yes! I have learned to live alone, but that does not mean that I prefer to have a good friend with me. And you have proven yourself. You are ironic and arrogant at times, but you have a big heart."<br/>"Fuck yeah. Well, here I stay until I die."<br/>"Are you then ready to receive Death with donuts and salt peanuts? Are you ready to receive Cromlyr?"<br/>"I'm fucking ready."<br/>Again I spoke without knowing for sure my feelings.<br/>"Then I can verify that you are a full-fledged cromlyrite. Although… A minor matter. Don't you notice that you are missing something in your life? What if you died now would you leave something very important behind?"<br/>Hey?<br/>Right on fucking target.<br/>Right on target! There he had caught me well. He had brought me out of my pseudo-hippie reverie state with great precision by asking those questions. In fact, I got up.<br/>Raltia. Cirea.<br/>Fuck! <br/>"I think I need to go back."<br/>Proad was not particularly disappointed either. In fact, he had it coming. <br/>"I can perfectly imagine why," he told me.<br/>"Really, man, I'm great here," I said, "but in my life I've hardly had any romantic or sexual relationships with anyone. And I don't know… I feel bad about it. I feel like a failure. I feel like I'm wasting my life if I don't do something about it."<br/>I think I sounded too pretentious saying "sentimental and sexual" and not just "sexual." I was a hypocrite.  I was not aware of it, but I had never really been in my life completely devoid of proper romantic relationships. Proad, for example, was very fond of me. No, the only thing I was missing was sex. I was giving up on a quiet life for as gross a reason as seeking sex. And Proad, a person who didn't even have a penis, didn't have to understand that.<br/>He was within his right to judge me a ridiculous guy to the core. He could have lectured me talking about heretical dependencies arising from the prevailing hypersexuality in the culture and its consequent alienation. But he didn't say anything. He had previously told me everything he had to say to me in this regard. If, after all this time, I was still stubborn in screwing up my life for the sole purpose of getting laid, there was little he could do.<br/>So I was preparing me to do the biggest bullshit he ever did in my fucking life, and no one was going to stop me. I deserved it. Fuck, I fucking deserved it. Living with Proad had been truly wonderful: he was a wise and powerful man, a loyal friend who always made sure that I did not lack anything. Given the opportunity to live with him, why did I want to reintegrate myself into society and worry again about finding food, clothing, and housing? It was ridiculous.<br/>Outside of Proad's house, I would have to eat some motherfucking boss' dick, I would have to do detestable jobs so that they would pay me a pittance of a salary with which to pay for some mediocre apartment in a filthy neighborhood. However, Proad only asked me for friendship, and in return, he offered me to live comfortably in a country house with all expenses paid. How could he be so mindless?<br/>"Thinking with your dick" could be a convincing answer. In a hypersexualized culture like ours, it would make perfect sense. Living with Proad, I was never going to fuck again, so I had to stop living with Proad. It was simple, wasn't it? Okay, I was risking a difficult life. But any alienated or hypersexual jerk — any Heretic, as Proad would say — could understand. The point is that I was not interested in "fucking" to dry. I say it with all my heart. By simply "fucking" I would not have given up a happy life with Proad.<br/>No, what I was specifically interested in was fucking with Raltia, with Cirea or with both at the same time. Fuck those two, specifically. I could be a hypocritical jerk, a sentimental jerk wanting to embellish reality by saying that I "was in love." In love, my asss. Have I ever said that I hate that expression? Its semantic ambiguity overwhelms me. There are people who understand by "falling in love" wanting to harass a person until the end of their days. Others speak of "infatuation" to refer to the slightest physical attraction. Others, however, consider that “it is only true love when you feel jealous”, which could be translated to “only possessive and obsessive maniacs fall in love”. Cirea had been helping me deconstruct myself into misogyny, so I denied the idea of becoming a possessive cocksucker.<br/>And I believed I was deconstructed. I thought I was no longer a possessive cocksucker. Later I would discover that no way I was deconstructed, but at that moment I wanted to take refuge in the idea that he only wanted to fuck, simply. It didn't occur to me to stop and think that I was giving too much importance to something like plain fucking, so I wallowed in my lie to the point of deciding to leave life with Proad.<br/>I then realized that stopping living with Proad implied relying on money. And where was I going to get money at that point? I remembered, for the first time in a long time, my boss.<br/>And then I was terrified. There was something there that did not add up. How had he not come to think of it before? Fuck. How long would it take there? Two weeks? More? My boss supposedly kept monitoring me. How the hell hadn't he told me anything to go back? Okay, I had the phone locked. But if he was really monitoring me, he should have also known this information and sought to contact me in another way.<br/>What's more, what the hell! If he was monitoring me, he should have seen Proad's solar panels and, like every good citizen alienated and loyal to Rasko, he should have denounced the elf to the RaskoCOPS. The house he was in at the time would have to be razed by now. Those days of reverie, of peace, and of earthly paradise were completely dreamlike, unreal, and rightly so. None of this made any real sense. None of that held up.<br/>What the hell was I living? I couldn't find a logical explanation for it. The more I thought, the more contradictions arose. Couldn't Proad read my mind? He had known how to determine my Dependence towards Cirea and Raltia just by looking at my face. And had he ignored everything related to a boss monitoring me and spying on his fucking house, a boss who, furthermore, would have no qualms about destroying that attempt at an earthly paradise with blood and fire? Something was wrong. Fuck. Something was wrong.<br/>"Garuga, I advise you to calm down," he said serenely. "And yes, I can do something similar to read thoughts. I knew from the first moment I saw you that what you were trying to do involved a huge risk for me."<br/>I braced myself for a round of revelations.<br/>"You will understand that, without any resentment, I did not feel willing to allow you to ruin my life by sending information about my house in real-time to your boss."<br/>It was clear. Too pretty had everything been. Proad could be good-natured, geek, altruistic, naive at times, but not an asshole.<br/>"I told you that, to enter here, you had to get rid of everything that caused you Dependence," he explained. "I cut all your connections with the outsiders, mostly by two people: Raltia and Cirea. They, and only they, caused you emotional stability. But there was a third person almost as important. A person who also caused you stability, although in this case not so much emotional as financial. I mean, of course, your boss."<br/>Motherfucker.<br/>"You will understand that it was convenient to also cut all connection with him so that you could learn the mysteries of the cromlyrite cult," he said with a smile that seemed devoid of malice. "And I'm not just referring to the fact of blocking all kinds of communications with him via telephone, but also blocking the monitoring spell that permeated your entire body."<br/>"Fuck!"<br/>Oh my god.<br/>All the work was lost. Two weeks that had been worth absolutely nothing. Little by little I began to come back to reality. What the hell was Idoing there? I had come to do a fucking job for RaskoLeisure, to film the cromlyrites in their natural habitat. And it had failed. The cromlyrites, after all, had turned out to be dangerous. And such a dodgy rock was not going to allow them to record a reality show as if nothing had happened. It was fucking obvious.<br/>As soon as he saw me, Proad could have killed me in many ways. He had resources. And more importantly: reasons. I was going to screw up his life, after all. But the bastard was cunning. I don't know what the fuck he had drugged me with, but he had made me completely desist from my original purpose. Killing me in no time became necessary if he could have me dancing to his tune, eating his junk food, and playing his shitty video games. I had become his fucking pet, and I had been happy about it.<br/>Proad had destroyed my life! And there was no fucking way to get it back! How the hell was I going to give back everything I lost? It was absolutely clear that after that, they would have fired me from work as incompetent. Raltia and Cirea would have forgotten about me. And the few friends he had, more of the same. There was no place for me in the outside world.<br/>"You have taken all my chances to be happy!"<br/>I couldn't say that at such an imprecation Proad would get angry —Proad never got angry—, but an expression crossed his face that made my soul fall to my feet. Sadness? Bitterness? No, we were talking about a tech-priest, a person with too much self-control to feel completely sad. But it would not be wrong to speak of disappointment, boredom, discomfort.<br/>"To be happy, Garuga? To be happy?" He said to me, with an excessively serious tone for what is usual for him. "To be happy? To be happy? To be happy! Are you aware of what you are saying? Be happy! Happy! What is happiness, perhaps? Did you have happiness beyond this place? Is allowing exploitative entrepreneurs to treat you like a slave with no possibility of change is to be happy, Garuga? Is obsessing over two girls who want nothing to do with you and wanting to die every time you tickle off their indifference is being happy, Garuga? Does Heresy bring happiness, my friend? So you think? Do you really believe that, my friend? Do you really think that you can be happy out there, more than here?"<br/>Okay. He was screwing it up. Fuck, Proad wasn't bad. He had a peculiar way of looking at things, but he wasn't bad. He hadn't wanted to screw up my life. He had wanted, uh, "improve it without permission." And I hadn't felt bad in his company either.<br/>No one had ever treated me so well. No one. <br/>And, curiously, he hadn't made any superhuman effort to treat me well. He had just listened to me, kept me company, let me be myself. Maybe block the monitoring had been too much, but… Damn. Who the hell was I to complain? How could I reproach a person for anything who, instead of killing me for wanting to destroy his life, had welcomed me as if I were his brother?<br/>"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said. I'm acting like a fucking cocksucker. Fuck, Proad, you don't deserve this. I've been a bad friend. I…"<br/>"No," he said sharply. "I don't want you to say that. You are not a bad friend. You are a wonderful person."<br/>What the hell?<br/>"What?"<br/>"Actually, nobody hangs out with me that long. Why do you think I'm alone? I really welcome anyone who wants to come here. I think, like a good cromlyrite, that there are no humans better than others. As long as they accept me, I accept anyone. Entire communities of drug addicts and homeless people could come to shelter here… In fact, they have come! Drug addicts, homeless, orphans, prostitutes ... Marginal people of all kinds who had nowhere to fall dead in a world in which solidarity died. I welcomed all of them as if they were my brothers, just like you! And they could stay at my house as long as they wanted until they died of old age! I considered, and continue to consider, that a person has the right not to want to know more about a world full of heretics. Beggars and drug addicts had plenty of reasons to stay with me to the end of their days, don't you think, Garuga? Like you! Just like you!<br/>I felt like the biggest shit in the world then. Maybe I was.<br/>"But they all leave. Everyone leaves me alone ... Everyone! Like you! But don't fucking get me wrong. I am a cromlyrite tech-priest. I have no dependency. I'm not going to sink just being alone. I have learned to be alone, but sometimes I think about these issues and it is very painful. But it's okay. Pain is something common to all people. It is healthy to accept it. Go, Garuga, go. It was my fault for thinking you would be different. Go away. Leave without grudges. I will put the monitoring and your mobile phone back into operation. Promised. But please ... If you ever get tired of the supposed happiness that the outside world can offer you ... Please, if so, come back. I will always welcome you with open arms. Goodbye friend."</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Garuga the Ravager: The Tech-Priest (Part 4)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Before I began to acquire a victimizing and fatalistic attitude, I judged that it would be far more productive for my future to call my boss as soon as possible and see if there was still any chance, however minimal, of getting my job back. I took out my cell phone and quickly looked for my boss's contact without looking at the RaskoHerald. I have to admit that I was looking forward to looking at that application and seeing if I had messages from Raltia or Cirea, but I postponed that "pleasure" for later. I called my boss.<br/>A tone. Two tones. Three tones. What if he didn't pick up the phone?<br/>"Tell me?"<br/>My heart started beating like hell.<br/>"Boss… It's me, Garuga. You see, all this time that ..."<br/>"Garuga? What? Garuga the geographer?"<br/>"Yes, I'm very sorry for the absence, it turns out that ..."<br/>I felt my boss put down the phone to talk to his office mates.<br/>"Hey! Listen to me all! He is the geographer! He's alive, fuck, he's alive! Damn, what a fucking coincidence!"<br/>"Boss, regarding the documentary you had me make, it turns out that ..."<br/>"Forget the documentary! Fuck, I swear we thought you were dead. It turns out that the same night we spoke on the phone for the last time, before I could get a glimpse of what is recorded on the cyberimplants of your retinas, there was an informational bombshell that shook the press in every city in Domain Rasko. A demon-possessed girl from Isrion! Morbid and sensationalism everywhere. The Kóverax cromlyrite thing went out of style automatically! In less than an hour, we had withdrawn the entire budget for the cromlyrite theme park. We needed all that money for a more ambitious project… A film based on true events about the possessed girl of Isrion! Based on true events, man! Do you know how morbid that gives? We're going to get rich! Fuck, we're going to get rich! I really appreciate everything you have recorded with your retinas about Ananjo's cromlyrite cultists, but I have to admit that it is no longer worth anything at all. What's more, I canceled the monitoring as soon as we decided to make the movie of the girl from Isrion. We couldn't spend more money on anything to do with the cromlyrites. Understand me! There was no time to lose. We have to release the movie as soon as possible, while the news is still fresh. If not, people forget!"<br/>I was absolutely sure that my boss was going to give me a scolding as soon as he found out that he had consented to interrupt the monitoring. But no. The guy hadn't even realized that the monitoring was interrupted. In fact, shortly after Proad interrupted the monitoring, my own boss had canceled it! And now he was apologizing to me!<br/>Fuck. And I'm scared. Fuck. That looked good. He did not show the slightest sign of anger at this vacation without permission. In fact, I was - and it is logical - for dead. Damn, what fucking luck.<br/>However, could I get my job back for RaskoLeisure? Here's something difficult.<br/>"I suppose you understand the rush to make the movie," he continued. "You will understand, therefore, that we decided ... Well, replacing you would not be the most appropriate word. Let's say… we were looking for a guy who could do the equivalent of what you do for this new project. The head of human resources selected, from among all the resumes we had, that of an uncle who had a degree in parapsychology."<br/>A degree in parapsychology? A degree in parapsychologyr? We are crazy? "Degree" and "parapsychology" are a fucking oxymoron. Parapsychology ain't fucking science, it's just a booby trick! How the fuck can there be a run of that superstitious crap? And worst of all, how could he hire a phony who had studied that?<br/>I tried to reassure myself before answering.<br/>"Sir, parapsychology is not a science ...<br/>"I know, I know! The idea was to find someone who wouldn't be scared when talking to the epileptic girls of Isrion. We thought a parapsychologist was used to seeing the most unwatchable shit in the universe, but it turned out that the guy was a fucking shit. He had a pretty bad time while he was working on the project, and just half an hour ago he called us saying he is resigning. We were pulling each other by the hair with that of looking for another person who could do his work ... Well, now it turns out that you are still alive, and it seems to us fucking great. You weren't freaked out going to see the Chromlyrite cultists! I don't think an epidemic of demonic possessions freaks you out now, do you?"<br/>I have a lot to thank my father for. If I am grateful to him for something, it is that he has been, above all things, a man of science. A real magician, an empirical guy. He detested, as I have said, superstition, and he educated me in strictly scientific values. I don't believe, therefore, in ghosts, or possessions, or the horoscope, or garbage like that. All that shit seems to be little more than a reflection of human stupidity. And, luckily for me, they knew how to value this trait well in the company. So I was not afraid to go see the so-called cromlyrite cultists. Likewise, I couldn't be afraid of something as ridiculous as demonic possessions. Bah!<br/>Are only people unable to type "epilepsy" into the RaskoPedia - probably due to lack of oxygen at birth? - believed in a capital foolishness like demonic possessions. Those movies about demon possessions “based on real events” were bloody blockbusters that implied that most of the population had been deprived of oxygen at birth. Obviously, I was not among them. Making a horror movie about mental illness seemed fucking able-ist to me, but what the hell? There were entire industries dedicating themselves entirely to misogyny. So, why not?<br/>"Count on me!"<br/>Well, I wasn't going to be homeless. That was enough. I decided then to go without delay to Isrion. However, before I wanted to look at the mobile. He was full of nerves. Fuck. Raltia? Cirea? Would they have written to me all this time?<br/>On the first stay, I was scared. Not a message. But at the end of the day, I got a pound and a half of messages at once. A fucking breakdown. Messages from groups that I didn't even remember. Fuck. Messages from all kinds of acquaintances of mine with all kinds of bullshit… And, among all that, a message from Cirea.<br/>I swallowed hard.</p><p>man, can we talk ??? PLZ… :( :(</p><p>But what.<br/>I looked at the date.<br/>Four days before.<br/>That is to say: the only person with whom I had a chance of having something more than a simple friendship had given me a golden opportunity to show me that she could be of help, and I had wasted it playing the idiot, between food and video games. Wonderful, huh?<br/>She gave me tachycardia and I ran to phone her. I prayed that she would pick up the phone for me.<br/>One-touch, two touches, three touches ...<br/>"Garuga?"<br/>"Cirea? Cirea, please, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry not to be there when ..."<br/>And I kept apologizing, and apologizing, and apologizing. She had spent weeks without answering me, but I felt the biggest shit in the world for having been four fucking days without paying attention to her. Great!<br/>It turned out that she was having some crappy problems with her parents. Constant tension, gratuitous violence, and threats to throw her out of the house. She couldn't take it anymore and didn't know who to turn to. When she called me she was fucking desperate and looking for someone to take refuge in. And I had passed her ass. What good friend, huh? But she didn't seem to hold a grudge against me. Right now a friend had taken her in in the city of Elara, but she didn't want, as she said, "to abuse her trust." She intended to stay there for another week until she could go to a concert in that town, but then she would leave and she did not know where to go.<br/>I obviously offered him to live with me. For the next few days, she intended to rent a motel in Isrion and spend as much time as necessary during the filming of the film. It was okay if she lived with me. She promised me that she would try to find work as soon as possible so that she would not have to abuse me. If I really knew how much I would enjoy her with her abusing me without limits! I was fucking desperate for company, and if Cirea had been such a great son of a bitch, she could have taken advantage of me ad nauseam.<br/>But I was happy. Cirea was going to spend a few days with me. Maybe our relationship could evolve into something damn better. She was missing me.<br/>I was excited, I couldn't deny it. My first days in Isrion were great. The job assigned to me turned out to be child's play. It was unethical to use really mentally ill kids to shoot a horror movie saying it was all the work of I don't know what gruesome devil, but it gave me money. Also, Cirea spoke to me constantly about the RaskoHeraldo and our relationship was going from strength to strength. In fact, she had confessed that she was "attracted to me," but that I mustn't expect anything from her because "she had to be very sure before she had anything with me." I accepted it with all the stoicism in the world. I could have inexhaustible patience in these matters.<br/>And so I spent the days, prostrate before the calendar, wishing that the day would come when Cirea would come to live with me. At first, the wait was not particularly unbearable. What's more: in Isrion lived Taepi, a childhood friend with whom I resumed the relationship as soon as I settled in that city. He was a good guy, a lover of the countryside and nature. A bit macho, by the way, although I don't know if I'm the best person to judge something like that. He was, on the other hand, as misanthropic as I was. We loved spending dead hours saying that humanity deserved to be annihilated and I don't know how much more shit.<br/>Very curious that my friend had such a character considering that he worked with children. He worked in a RaskoCentro located on the outskirts of the city, where he took in kids who had become homeless for one reason or another. He wasn't enthusiastic about his work, but he didn't dislike it either.<br/>This is how my first days in Isrion passed. A lot of demonic girls, a lot of Taepi, a lot of chatting with Cirea. The only shortcoming? Very little Raltia. But what was he going to do? It was clear that she had given up the possibility of a free, polyamorous relationship because she was with that rapist bastard called Geiher. At first, it hurt, but Cirea was helping me get through it. There was even a moment when I almost completely forgot about Raltia ...<br/>Until she gave me to get into some social networks and I saw pictures of Raltia… celebrating her wedding with Geiher.<br/>Her wedding.<br/>Wedding.<br/>Wedding, oh my fucking god, wedding!<br/>And with Geiher! With that fucking abuser!<br/>My utopian inner peace had completely disappeared. Raltia had spent a fortune on the fucking wedding. His thing with Geiher was serious, fucking serious. Before it did not affect me so much because she used to tell me, to reassure me, that it was not going to last long. I don't know, I supposed - idiot of me! - that a person minimally intelligent would end up getting tired of so much beating, rape, harassment ... Is it logical, right? Well, no. Raltia had not tired of Geiher's evilness. She was going to marry him! To marry him!<br/>That son of a bitch had started by damaging the relationship Raltia and I had. At first, both she and I considered ourselves polyamorous. We could have a partner or seven hundred as long as we were able to provide affection to all equally. In principle, I only had her. Ours was already a few years old. And originally it hadn't been a polyamorous relationship or shit like that. It was an ordinary relationship. In fact, the idea of "being a polyamorous relationship" had been her. I, in a hyperbolic love to her, I accepted without thinking much. And it wasn't bad, it wasn't bad at all. Both she and I could do whatever we want with whoever we want without having to explain anything.<br/>The problem came with Geiher's stellar appearance.<br/>At first, that guy was nothing serious. He was nothing more than a simple bum he had met at the college party. It gave me that having something with someone in a drunken state implied a violation from some side, but I did not feel capable of complaining much. I didn't want to be possessive, so I didn't see a problem with her continuing to maintain contact with him, even if that contact meant continuing to have sex. I also had my thing with some since the relationship was open. I could not complain.<br/>What happened to be a simple "friend to fuck", however, ended up becoming her second boyfriend. And for my part, there was no problem either. I was also looking forward to having another girlfriend. That polyamory thing was cool, wow. No jealousy, no complications. And I still like the idea. But in an industrialized world like ours… Oh!<br/>Raltia could not bring two boyfriends. She was getting too stressed. I relented. I was more concerned with her stability than with her company. And Geiher put too much pressure on him to attend to him. For a time, she maintained the relationship with both but giving much more priority to him. And I assumed it, what a remedy. I didn't dislike the idea of my girlfriend spending more time with another boyfriend. Maybe it bothered me a little bit, just a little bit, the fact that that boyfriend had theoretically raped her. But I tried not to think too much about it.<br/>Then even stranger things came. Geiher told him that she wanted to get serious. What a standard lifelong monogamous couple. That he didn't want strange ways, in short. So Raltia had no choice but to break up with me.<br/>That already didn't be fucking funny.<br/>I felt abandoned and hurt, but I didn't blame him. There was nothing to recriminate.<br/>Not her. After all, it was her decision.<br/>Was it her decision?<br/>No way! It was Geiher's decision! He had coerced her into leaving me. But in any case, it wasn't her fault, it was Geiher's. Raltia's character was fickle and manipulable. I didn't blame her. I didn't hold a grudge against him. At least her friendship remained.<br/>At least? Well, at first yes. Then Geiher forbade him to have contact with boys other than him. I lie: she did not "forbid" him, but she "regulated it for the stability of the relationship."<br/>I was still very much into Raltia, and I could settle for a simple friendship, but being forbidden from her contact with her, I could not tolerate it. However, he had no resources to do anything. I had to screw around and settle for occasionally talking to her about the RaskoHerald, hoping that she would leave that monster one day and come back to me.<br/>That day she did not come, so I began to resign myself to the idea that she was not going to leave him. To make this resignation more bearable, to that first idea I added a second one coming of my own: that was worth it because Raltia must have been very happy with Geiher, despite being a controlling misogynist. If he really loved her, I had to shut up, or else he would be proving to be a worse macho even than Geiher.<br/>I tried to be happy - I tried - with thoughts like that until a group of her friends approached me with terrible news. Among them, by the way, was Cirea: that's where I met her. They told me that Geiher not only limited his contact with boys: also with girls. And, in addition, she beat him out of her, forced her to record porn videos for him, and raped her when he wanted. But I'm not talking about socially accepted rapes, like when he got her drunk, but "full-fledged" rapes. He was literally forcing her, he was forcing her!<br/>Raltia should be going through the worst hell with such a monster. When a person is in such extreme situations, his reactions have to be, for the hell, extreme. Raltia could have tried to escape, commit suicide, kill that motherfucker ... Or do what she did. Developing a rare Stockholm syndrome - another consequence of the problems with self-esteem that her family had generated? - And assuming that everything about Geiher was "normal." Limiting her friendships was still "for the good of the relationship." The beatings were "to educate her." Porn videos were "the least thing to do when she was in love." And the rapes were "nights of passion in which Geiher aroused her hidden desires."<br/>Oh my god.<br/>Knowing that news caused me - apart from an anxiety disorder that I did not overcome until a certain event that still should not be narrated - to remember a lot about my father. His phrase "oh, they're doing it wrong." Fucking old man.<br/>For a moment I thought about intervening, about doing something to separate her from that bastard. I soon discarded that idea. Cirea made me see that if I acted like this, I would be motivated by jealousy rather than altruism and that I would be being a “white knight”, contributing to increasing the misogynism of society by being the white knight who is going to rescue the lady in distress. No, I couldn't do anything: I didn't have the resources either. But Cirea and her friends did. They all planned something to separate her from that monster. They carried out quite an elaborate plan, in fact. Nothing should have gone wrong.<br/>And nothing would have gone wrong had it not been for Raltia's Chosen-One. If this had been a normal girl, nothing bad would have happened. But everything changes if she has magical powers obtained at birth that exceed human understanding. A torrent of spells cast by her carried the plan from beginning to end. They hampered the movements of all her friends, so they couldn't do anything. We ended up, like this, resigned to the fact that she would continue with that monster for a while, but we had the confidence that she would end up leaving him herself. Of course, if she wanted to, her Chosen-One powers could help her get rid of him ...<br/>And then I see that. Photos on social media from her wedding.<br/>Wedding.<br/>Wedding with a fucking rapist!<br/>She then gave me a pretty funny anxiety attack. Cirea was helping me with anxiety lately, but no one couldn't calm me down. I left the motel in order to get some air and get my ideas in order, but without much hope. That night he was not going to be able to sleep, it was clear. However, I called my friend Taepi. I wanted to forget about Raltia and have him tell me about her work. After meeting in the town square we went for a walk and he started talking to me about his nonsense.<br/>"It turns out that this morning he called us a couple to adopt a child."<br/>"Oh, exciting."<br/>"It seems that the woman is a Chosen-One. And therefore sterile. What a matter of being a Chosen-One, huh? At first, I thought it must be the host. But being sterile… I don't know, it's bad."<br/>My heart skipped a beat. Speaking of Chosen-Ones implied for me to think necessarily of Raltia. What's more, is it possible that ...?<br/>"Tell me more about that," I said, suspiciously interested.<br/>Taepi did not take much interest in me, that he used to stop listening to me when he told me about his work. But even so, he kept telling me.<br/>"It turns out that the couple was looking for a little boy, to raise him from scratch. And well, you know that all my 'children' are very grown-up. They are almost teenagers. The smallest of them all is an elf boy who was brought to me relatively recently. Do you remember that move by the Kóverax bandits that came out on TV a few weeks ago?"<br/>"Damn I do remember! I had to do a job related to ..."<br/>"Well, it doesn't matter." It turns out that the elf boy was rescued from Kóverax. He lived with those crazy people. What a bad feeling! But now we are re-educating him so that he can have a normal life like other children. His name is Enusor, Enusor of Kóverax. He will be… Nine or ten years old. I think this marriage will take him. But why are you so interested in this topic? You're pale, man."<br/>"What was the woman's name? What?" I said, not hiding my despair.<br/>Taepi backed away, a little scared.<br/>"Man, it seems like your life is on it. What happen? I have her name written here ... Look. Her name is Raltia. Raltia. And her husband, Geiher."<br/>But...<br/>Oh my god.<br/>Not even talking to Taepi, my childhood friend, could I get rid of that topic! Fuck! Fuck! Then I felt a lot of anguish.<br/>"What's wrong with you, man? Seriously, you're worrying me. Do you know them? Or did you want to adopt the little Enusor of Kóverax?"<br/>"A son. A son! This no longer has a solution!"<br/>The idea of a wedding seemed insane, aberrant, absurd. Something difficult to reverse. Crappy, very crappy. A relationship can be broken. A wedding is more screwed up. But a son? Raltia had to be kidding.<br/>A kid was a dirty trick, was the final chain. Raltia couldn't get a divorce without sinking the boy's life. And wasn't she going to sink it anyway? An environment of beatings and rapes was not the best thing to grow up with. The boy would have been raised on crazy cromlyrites, but he wasn't sure which was worse.<br/>The anxiety increased like I never had before.<br/>I tried to calm down and tell my whole situation to Taepi. He nearly split a log. He had no idea that I had ever had a girlfriend. When I told him about the open relationship, he was not buying it. And when he found out that my ex was the same person he had talked to on the phone to adopt Enusor ...<br/>"You can't let her adopt him, man! Not just for me ... It's for the good of the child, damn it! This is not an environment to grow up in!"<br/>"Man, the RaskoCenters policy is not that, and you know it. As long as the adoptive family pays us, the rest gives us so much. They can already be pedophiles with mental disorders or whatever they want: if they have money, there are no more conditions. Moreover, on more than one occasion we have had to sell children to pedophiles with mental disorders. And I can assure you that they pay better than normal families."<br/>I had intended to give him a stupid answer, but held back. He noticed.<br/>"Man, I'm not the owner of the RaskoCenters chain. I'm a fucking worker with a shitty salary that barely gives me a living. A member of the proletariat. I have enough to be grateful for the work that I have to go about imposing moral conditions. If I get cocky, they fire me and I stay in the street, to be raped by the skinheads. I don't know if it makes up a lot, huh."<br/>I shit on everything.<br/>I assumed that adoption was going to be inevitable. I wanted to be alone. I got up and wanted to get out of there.<br/>"Hey, wait!"<br/>"Does not matter".<br/>"No, man ... I know this pisses you off a lot and I don't like seeing you like that. Wait, really. I can't stop the adoption, but maybe we can do something else."<br/>I shrugged skeptically.<br/>"What the hell are we going to do? And don't you suggest that I adopt the child? I have no money. Besides, if they didn't adopt that one, they would adopt another. The idea is that you don't adopt anything, damn it!"<br/>"No, I wasn't going to say that. Look ... Who's in agreement with everything is with her, do you understand? Her husband is on a business trip. The one who is going to come to see and take the child is her, only her. And she gains a fortune with her Chosen-One powers. Do you get me?"<br/>"No."<br/>I didn't really want to cling to vain hopes, really.<br/>"I mean, when I'm here, we could throw some kind of surprise party to celebrate the adoption. You know my country house is perfect for that shit. An evening there would be great, by the light of the fire, with the stars in the sky. There we could try to convince her that Geiher is a rapist and to quit. So, she could adopt the child, but she would adopt it herself. The boy would live with Raltia, only with Raltia. He wouldn't have to put up with scenes of gender violence or anything like that, you understand? What's more, if he leaves Geiher he might come back with you! Perhaps you will become the adoptive father of Enusor of Kóverax!"<br/>As he was speaking he was seeing gaps in his plan. Ridiculous. Totally ridiculous.<br/>"Look, I'm passing. Doing that would be fucking macho. I don't want to be a white knight. As a man, I am not the one to tell a girl to leave her boyfriend because he is too bad at coming with me. It's misogynist, man, society is not for that shit. I passed."<br/>"And wouldn't it be more misogynist to sit idly by while you watch a child adopt in the company of a rapist?"<br/>Taepi, you fucking son of a bitch, isn't it even more macho to work with a company that sells girls to pedophiles and rapists? But I kept quiet. The conversation made less and less sense.<br/>"Well," Taepi continued, "if you think that neither you nor I, as men, should do anything ... Why don't you ask a girl for help? A friend of hers, go. Perhaps it is less macho for a woman to help another woman, right?"<br/>I called Cirea and told her about all. The truth is that she was quite hallucinating, but she was quite collaborative. She promised to call Raltia. The truth is that since the argument between Geiher and her, her relationship had grown very cold, but there was no talk of enmity either.<br/>Shortly after, I found out that Raltia was so excited about adopting the child that she didn't care about everything else, and anything made her happy. The celebratory party at Taepi's cottage made her quite excited. She didn't care, mysteriously, the fact that I was there. And neither does Geiher.<br/>Something strange had to be behind all this. I smelled of singe. It made no sense that the overprotective Geiher was suddenly so solicitous. My anxiety, therefore, did not disappear. The good news is that Cirea knew how to keep it under control. She loved me, she loved me very much. I was convinced that if she left him time and space, we could have a fairly stable relationship.<br/>The glorious day finally arrived. Cirea, at last, moved to live with me. I remembered, over and over, that I had to be patient. I was letting her live in my motel unconditionally, whether she wanted to have something with me or not. So I saw no problem that the first day he spent not with me, but in a squat in Isrion where there was a reggae concert.<br/>Wait to?<br/>My opinion of squatters and people who listen to reggae was… Anyway. They looked like scum to me. I wasn't the one to pick on the friends of the only girl who paid attention to me, but I would be lying if I said I was excited about her going there. But, well, I was no one to change Cirea. When I met her, she smoked joints and she wasn't going to quit because I told her.<br/>Furthermore, she was a much more mature person than Raltia. She knew how to move around the world by herself without fear of anything bad happening… Right?<br/>The first night she spent in the squatting house, fine. Nothing happens. The next day she still showed no signs of life. I called her several times and she did not take it from me. I shrugged and tried to lead my normal life. Overall, I had a lot of work to do with the movie and the interviews with supposedly possessed girls. Finally, when I returned to the motel after work, I ran into her.<br/>She was waiting for me. Apparently, she had lost her cell phone.<br/>I assumed the worst ...<br/>And sadly, I was right to assume the worst.<br/>Apparently the squat house concert had been somewhat chaotic. She had smoked a few more joints, she had drunk a few more liters ... And, well, she had ended up making out with a guy she remembered absolutely nothing about.<br/>By the way, I haven't said it until now. Cirea suffered from depression. Clinical depression.<br/>Being raped is not very healthy to cure clinical depression, is it?<br/>"What the hell?" I said. "You say you don't remember anything? Nothing at all? You will have to remember something! The slightest feature can do the trick. The RaskoCOPS databases are brutal ... with little that we know, we will be able to report!"<br/>"Report? What are you talking about? Report who?"<br/>"The rapist!" You deserve justice!<br/>"What rapist?"<br/>Seriously?<br/>"Cirea… The one from yesterday. The son of a bitch who raped you."<br/>"No one has raped me!" She retorted angrily.<br/>"What? But if you just told me that ..."<br/>"I told you that a guy made out with me while I was high, nothing more!"<br/>"That, my dear, is called rape!" I exploded, desperate.<br/>She looked at me with a mixture of disgust and anger. I wanted to die with desire. Fuck. It had happened to me. Me…<br/>"Who the hell are you, a fucking man, to say what rape is or isn't? You will never suffer rape! You have no fucking idea what you're talking about! You are just jealous because I fucked an unknown guy instead of you, and you think I owe you sex for some reason!"<br/>Hey?<br/>No no no!<br/>Fuck!<br/>She had taught me those things myself. She had shown me that having sex with a drunken woman is equivalent to raping her… Just like Geiher did to Raltia! Why was she different from herself?<br/>Then I realized how truly terrible it was. Perhaps Cirea was aware that she had been raped… Probably more aware than me! But she refused to face that reality, and it offended her that I showed it to her so starkly. It was terrible. I, in an attempt to help, had screwed up ...<br/>I started crying.<br/>Luckily for me, little by little everything relaxed, and Cirea ended up forgiving me. The following days until Raltia's arrival we did not have a bad time. We were sad, depressed, defeated, but not essentially bad. At least we felt some tranquility. I would go to work, and she would stay at the motel, listening to music, looking at her cell phone, and smoking joints. She didn't come out again, she had no interest.<br/>By the way, I have to say that I came to hate my job. Every time I saw less meaning in that film, documentary, mockumentary, or whatever the hell it was, which I still haven't heard about. I didn't have a fixed role in all of it either, and I ended up being the errand boy. Study geography to end up being the errand boy...! And all to do something of supposed terror. Terror! Terror! What was terrifying about four imaginary demons, four shitty special effects? The real terror was out there in our everyday lives.<br/>They were men. Fucking men. No demons, no spirits, no shit like that. Men raped and oppressed. They had — we had, rather — ruined the lives of the two people I loved the most. How to understand that there were people scared of imaginary demons ...?<br/>I was in this when Raltia arrived, who stayed, curiously, in another room in my motel. Taepi informed us that she was already meeting with him in his cottage, celebrating the boy. He told us to go there when we could.<br/>Some of that didn't fit me. Geiher letting his wife be alone with a guy? I smelled of singe.<br/>As soon as we arrived, the cat's out of the bag. She didn't even give me two kisses, she just waved at me. As for Cirea, she was suspiciously kind to her. I already said that the thing had not turned out very well between the two of them. It didn't fit me! Until a phrase from Raltia clarified everything.<br/>"Cirea, sweetie, I'm so glad to see you. Of course, I would not advise you to try to separate me from Geiher again. Right now, he is monitoring me through a spell that I have cast myself, and he is aware of everything I do or say to me. And no matter how silly you do, I'll activate a teleportation spell for Geiher to come here and say four little words to you. You won't mind interrupting your business trip just to settle the score!"<br/>No comment.<br/>Everyone knows that the Chosen-Ones are a legendary race of wizards capable of razing entire cities with little effort. They have traditionally been used by the zaibatsu as weapons of mass destruction, to raze the dominions of enemy zaibatsus.<br/>But a Chosen-One who used his powers to promote a privacy violation against himself ...?<br/>Surreal. The alienating power of the oppressive patriarchy was still above that of a race of legendary sorcerers.<br/>The rest of the night, of course, was spent amidst enormous tensions. We had gone to hell with the plan to convince Raltia, of course, so we didn't know what to talk to her about. A night full of delicious awkward silences. And if that wasn't enough, Cirea was truly down. From the outset, she had very recent problems with her parents, whom she would probably never see again. As if this weren't enough, she was beginning to feel a little regretful about the squatting house issue. She didn't quite admit it was rape, but she didn't remember it with joy either.<br/>I would have liked to help her, but nothing she said seemed to work. Also, for some unknown reason, she seemed to pay more attention to Taepi. The latter was not particularly depressed: he seemed amused by the situation, in fact. As soon as she could, he took the opportunity to get several gallons of beer. I did not have a drink, I did not feel like it. And Raltia was forbidden by Geiher — is very curious, by the way, that the same guy who got her drunk one day forbids her to drink. But Taepi and Cirea started drinking really hard ...<br/>It was impossible for me to have any conversation with them. Raltia did not take her eyes off the phone, while the other two for some reason did not speak to me either. They just laughed at me trying to light the fire with a fireball spell that went fucking wrong. I started to get pissed off. Cirea was getting too drunk and Taepi was getting too close. But I relaxed. Intervening was too macho: Cirea could do what she wanted with her life. At first, I decided to act like this. Then everything changed.<br/>Things began to get complicated with the issue of firewood. Taepi's motherfucker had it all planned. Whenever he could, he went out to fetch firewood in the company of Cirea. Or worse still, he would send Raltia and me out together to look. The point is, he was managing to be alone with the elf too many times.<br/>And on those occasions, he encouraged her to drink alcohol in large quantities.<br/>And Cirea drank, and she drank, and she drank ...<br/>The situation was tense and I had no one to take refuge in. The three people I loved the most were there, and not only couldn't they help me, but they were the fucking source of my problems. The conversations I had with Raltia when we were alone, by the way, were funny. She couldn't even be called "conversations". We both spent the whole fucking time looking at our phones! Nor was there much to say. She didn't want to tell me anything beyond how happy her marriage to Geiher was. She even told me that she was writing a book about her own life, recounting her triumph in her world as Chosen-One and hers as "perfect" loves with Geiher.<br/>I felt like acting. But then she heard them comments of Cirea and I had to shut up.<br/>“You, as a man, have no right to make any decisions on feminist matters. Doing so would be even more macho! "<br/>I must not do anything. But there was no other woman who did anything. I was grossed out by the situation. Cirea, by the way, was getting drunker and drunker...<br/>And more affectionate with Taepi.<br/>I realized what was happening. That son of a bitch wanted to take advantage of her drunkenness and her emotions out of control to hook up with her. It hadn't even occurred to me to touch it with my finger, but my childhood friend didn't care a feather or a fig. My childhood friend…! My childhood friend was another son of a bitch rapist who was going to get sex with the girl I liked on the basis of being an unscrupulous jerk. Something that made me gag.<br/>To say that in this situation he felt helpless would be an understatement. That went one step further. I couldn't fucking do anything. He were going to rape Cirea! He were going to rape her! And what do I do? A whirlwind of options came to mind. But they weren't really options. They were not solutions. Whatever he did was wrong. I was going to become a hopeless failure ...<br/>The "options" were as follows:<br/>One. I would go up to Cirea and ask her to stop drinking. He could make the excuse that having the squatting house so recent, was not a good idea. If Cirea stopped drinking, Taepi probably couldn't take advantage of her. Issue? Asking her to stop drinking would be fucking macho, because I would be turning myself into a "white knight" again, an oppressive male who thinks he has some authority over her. Therefore, the option discarded.<br/>Two. I told Taepi that no matter how much Cirea drank, he shouldn't mess with her. It would be even worse: if Cirea didn't hear me, the bastard Taepi would end up telling her about it, and it would be interpreted as that I was extremely jealous for not being the one having sex with her. I'm not going to lie, a little jealous yes I was. But jealousy alone has never led to an anxiety attack. The chances of rape in front of my loved ones, yes. In any case, this was not an option either.<br/>Three. I was ahead of Taepi and I hooked up with Cirea. In the state she was in, she was hardly going to reject me. So at least I didn't feel that terrible jealousy inside me. But what the hell? There the rapist would be me. He would not feel jealous, but he would feel a beastly conscience for having raped someone. I insist: jealousy does not cause anxiety; witness a rape, yeah. And be the author of the rape even more. Fuck! I couldn't have endured raping Cirea without cutting my wrists afterward. But the bastard Taepi didn't care about it. He was going to rape her, he was going to rape her! And yet, I don't think he had a conscience because he didn't consider it rape. Not him, not anyone my age! I was one of the few. Cirea herself had deconstructed me! But that deconstruction was bringing me too much pain. I felt pathetic for not being the one to hook up with Cirea. I felt like a loser. I don't know…<br/>Four. Do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Let things take their course. Allowing Taepi to rape Cirea right under my nose. I don't know. Wouldn't it be even more immoral? He who consents to rape is no less guilty than the rapist, that's how I see it. He is an accessory to rape! But trying to prevent it, as I have already said, would not have been better. Trying to prevent rape implied looking like a “white knight”, like an overprotective macho. But not preventing it made me an accomplice.<br/>I wanted me to die.<br/>I did not know what to do. I would never know what I should have done.<br/>I ended up opting for option four, not because it seemed better to me, but out of sheer apathy. I felt unable to move a single finger. I ended up huddling in the corner and began to cry. Fuck…<br/>I then remembered Proad. Of how very happy I had been in his company, without problems of that type, without depending on anything ... where all existence was summed up to walking through the countryside and playing video games.<br/>How wise the son of a bitch was.<br/>How miserable I was, how disgusting I was, and how wise the fucking tech-priest was.</p><p> </p><p>END</p>
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